Monday Mystery #14: It’s Rick Nelson!

Rick Nelson at the old City Auditorium, March 15, 1958. (Frank Pusateri : Chronicle file)

We had a lot of folks guess someone with the surname Nelson, but only one Nelson was correct: Rick Nelson.

Here, he’s performing at the old City Auditorium on March 15, 1958. “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” actor put on two shows that day.

Here’s how Chronicle reporter Howard Stentz described it:

A screaming and almost hysterical crowd, mostly of teen-age girls, filled the City Auditorium when young Rick Nelson appeared there Saturday evening.

[…]

Teen-agers and some adults marked the end of his rock n’ roll tunes with high-pitched whoops, which continued for minutes after each number.

Police officers kept a friendly watch and helped to subdue the noise after it had gone for some time.

Young rock n’ roll fans kept camera flash bulbs popping during and between acts as they gave an overwhelming vote of confidence to the young singer.

Curiously, Nelson’s National Airlines flight to Houston from Florida experienced trouble while over the Gulf when the plane lost the tips of two propeller blades while in flight. The co-pilot was injured when, the Chronicle reported, blade fragments penetrated the fuselage near his seat.

The Houston Post said the flight was 30 minutes out of Miami when one of the plane’s engines caught fire. The propeller’s tips broke off as the pilot feathered the burning engine.

The plane ended up making an emergency stop in Tampa, and Nelson and his entourage took another flight to Houston.

“I guess I was nervous. In fact, I guess I was scared for a while,” the 17-year-old told the Chronicle.

You’ll recall that Nelson died when a plane he was in crash-landed and burned on Dec. 31, 1985, near DeKalb. He was en route to Dallas for a New Year’s Eve performance.

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Gaston Glock was the first to guess correctly. As such, the puzzle is Gaston’s.

Reader Brent was the second to guess correctly. Brent will get a copy of “Rawhide Ranger Ira Aten” by Bob Alexander (452 pages, UNT Press). Here, Alexander looks at the life of the frontier lawman who saw the transition of the Texas Rangers from Indian fighters to peace officers.

Brent will also receive “Mier Men: Adventures and Sufferings of Colorful Texans on the Mier Expedition” by Jo Harper and Josephine Harper (236 pages, Eakin Press). The Harpers, a mother and daughter team, have put together a detailed story of a small group of Texans who invaded Mexico in 1842 and fought at Ciudad Mier, considered one of the most disastrous of the expeditions into Mexico.

TanyaY was the third to guess correctly. The third-place prize is “Texas: An Illustrated History” by John Perry (184 pages, Hippocrene Books) and “Beyond Texas Through Time,” edited by Walter L. Buenger and Arnolodo de Leon (295 pages, Texas A&M University Press).

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Before Nelson’s performance that night, he managed to take questions from high school journalists during a news conference at the Shamrock Hilton. The Post said the teens actually tried to crash the news conference. We have some photos from that, along with a later photo of Nelson in Houston.